


So Little Warmth I've Felt Before

by warmommy



Category: Inglourious Basterds
Genre: F/M, Hugo in dress uniform, Mental Illness, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, award ceremony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 06:14:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13583994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmommy/pseuds/warmommy
Summary: “It doesn’t matter. You’ve moved on and I have to be okay with that.”“Are you kidding me? We’re not fine!”“I tried my best to not feel anything for you. Guess what? I failed.”Apparently, you had let him misconstrue some things, over the years.





	So Little Warmth I've Felt Before

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find this and a lot more at my tumblr, warmommy.tumblr.com!

He looked so uncomfortable, standing there, in a uniform for a country he never fought for, flashbulbs capturing his image for newspapers, magazines, and, one day, textbooks. Of course, none of you, your team, or what was left of you, were all that comfortable, but it was what was expected of you. With medals pinned upon your chests, you and what remained of the Basterds accepted Congressional Medals of Honour, paused for photo ops, and the only thing that made this better was the promise of open bar at the reception party that was to follow. 

You kept your eye on Hugo. It had been your job to keep an eye on him in France, too. It was different now, of course, and you hadn’t spoken to him very much in quite a while, but you still felt responsible. You still cared about the guy. 

You got into the same car as him, shiny and black, and shut the door before poor Smitty could climb in beside you. Hugo was unhappy about being in close quarters with you, which chased away some of your complacency. The two of you rode in thick, electric silence. Several times, you caught the blue flash of his eyes darting away from you. 

On the highway, you sighed. “I noticed that you were distressed at the ceremony, so I thought I should do something to defuse the situation before we got to the reception. That was all.”

“I’ve never known a time when you gave a damn about my comfort,” he said.

“That’s not fair. That’s not even true, and you know it.” You smoothed your skirt over your knees, and you should’ve known this was a mistake. Ever since it ended, he had been utterly unreachable, and why would that have changed now? Why would he have needed you? “It’s okay. We’ll get there and go our separate ways and I don’t want to talk to you again. It’s fine.”

“ **Are you kidding me?”** He burst out angrily, so volatile and sudden that you expected the driver to swerve. “No,  **we are not fine** !”

“I wasn’t referring to ‘us’,” you corrected gently. “I was just saying that, once we exit this vehicle, we stay away from each other from now on, and that’ll be fine for both of us.”

He scoffed and it was supposed to be laughter, but it wasn’t. “Listen to yourself. You call all the fucking shots, don’t you?”

“You have been giving me the stink eye ever since I got into this car with you! Before that, I haven’t heard from you in months! It’s pretty clear to me that you’ll be quite pleased to have me gone from your life, and fine, if that’s how you want it, that’s what it’ll be. I can hardly be the one calling the fucking shots when I don’t have a say in what happens, when you can’t even be civil.”

Hugo turned to you with one of his classic deranged scowls and lit himself a cigarette. “ **It doesn’t matter. You’ve moved on and I have to be okay with that.** ”

“I’ve moved on? From _what_? To _what_?” This was tiring. Hunger gnawed raw at your stomach. “What the hell are you talking about and what the fuck–”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” He rubbed his fist against his forehead. “Not to what, to  _ whom _ .”

“No.” You shook your head. “No, that cannot be what this is about.”

“ _ You were mine!”  _ The outburst was even worse than the last. “ _ You _ were  _ mine _ . I had you, here.” Without looking at you, the German made a sweeping gesture up and down his chest. Then, he made a fist and held it over his heart. “You’re horrible, you know. **I tried my best to not feel anything for you. Guess what? I failed** _. _ You’re evil.”

No matter how badly you wanted to, it was not a good idea to hit him. At the very best he was unstable, but the very best is rarely the case. If you put a hand on him, he would return it with fury. Instead, you sunk your nails into the fabric of your clothes. “Hugo–”

“Don’t even say my name!”

“You  _ shut your goddamn mouth _ ,” you ground out, unable to look at him, now. This was a fight. It was going to happen. You just needed to be the one in control of it. “Hugo, not one word of what you just said is true. If I ever gave you the impression that there was more–”

“If you gave me the impression?” He was howling now, mad as a rabid wolverine and just as thirsty for blood. “What  _ world  _ do you live in?”

“Sweetheart, I live in the real world. The question is which world are  _ you  _ living in? You cannot,  _ cannot _ , be angry with me about shit you made up inside your head.”

“I didn’t make–I didn’t–hey, you.” Hugo rapped his knuckles against the driver’s seat. “Back to the hotel, not the venue.”

“No, take him there  _ after  _ you drop me off.” You turned back to him. “I am not battling it out with you in a hotel room, you goddamn idiot Kraut.”

“The hotel is closer, ma’am. I can drop him off first.”

You breathed in heavily and rubbed your eyes. “Hugo, you imagined a lot of things that just were not there. I knew that you were doing it and I didn’t do anything about it because…because you needed to, for some reason, and I didn’t question it because it made my life easier. It made you easier. You became calm, and everyone stopped thinking you were going to turn on us. It was my job to stop any infighting from happening. Do you understand that, Hugo?”

“You’re not only lying to me, you’re lying to yourself.” Before the driver could even shift into park, Hugo was hauling you out of the car and towards the door. Fighting it did not help, and, of course, no one tried to stop him. He must’ve looked terrifying, and you were a little scared. There was a reason, a very good reason, that you were tasked with keeping him reined in. 

He’d just mistaken it for something different. 

You were inside of his room within minutes.

“I don’t want to do this.” You held your hands up and he didn’t get any closer to you. “I’m going to call a cab and I’m going to leave. You have done enough. You have made quite a show already, you’ve proven your point, all that.”

“Clearly I have not.”

“Listen to me. I will say literally anything you want me to say, if you’ll let me leave this room without touching me.”

This brought a look of pain, clear as day, to his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you. I wasn’t going to.”

“After everything you have said to me, after what you just did, I’m supposed to think, oh, this is a safe man to be around? Let alone be in a locked room with?” You pointed to the door. “Let me go.”

He shook his head. “No. Not until we understand each other. Sit with me. I’m not going to hurt you. You are the last person that I would harm, and I’m the last person you should suspect.”

“Hugo, please listen to me.” You hooked your thumbs around his ears, standing close now. “I’m hungry and tired and I should be drunk right now. I don’t want to be here.”

“This won’t take long.” He had visibly relaxed since you’d touched him. “You tell me what I imagined and I’ll tell you what I know.”

“That’s simple. You imagined a relationship of a romantic nature when there wasn’t one. You’re angry because you view all of our interactions during that time as an investment for which you now do not possess the desired return.” After a moment, you took off your heels and walked along the plush carpet to the sitting area. The government really did love them some Basterds.

Quick to follow, Hugo sat so close that your knees brushed against each other’s. “We loved each other.  _ That  _ is simple. It is truth.”

“There’s different kinds of love, Hugo. Earlier, you said  _ to whom _ . Who do you think it is that’s wrested me away from our imaginary relationship?”

“I don’t want to say. I won’t speculate.”

“You already have. All your paranoid delusions are speculations.”

“I’m not crazy!”

“But you are paranoid. You are so fucked up, nothing can ever make it right. I don’t even know what it is.” Sad, sad thoughts. You sagged in your chair. “Just because there wasn’t any romance doesn’t mean that I never loved you, or that I never thought you deserved all the happiness in the world.”

“I don’t need anything to make me ‘right’, I’m fine this way,” he choked. “I am  good just the way that I am, or were you  _ lying _ ?”

“Of course not. You  _ are _ good. Being fucked up never made you bad, either. It just made you hurt.”

“I don’t want to talk about that.” His accent grew more and more thick.

“I didn’t expect that you would.” 

God, he was so good at drawing you back in. Your arms felt empty without him in them, and from the way he looked, his face echoing his self-doubt and that fear and that pain you’d discovered long ago, that was where he most needed to be. 

You kicked his boot, unbuttoning your jacket. “Get on the bed. Go.”

He did exactly as he was told, looking at you curiously. When he realised what you were doing, he reached for you, arms extended. You sat up in his perfectly made bed and wrapped both arms around him. It made you smile just to see. Hugo was twice was broad as you and a head taller, but he looked comfortable, happy, even, where he was. 

It was adorable. You’d always thought so. Any little traces of your lingering fears and doubts about being alone with him were vanished. Reason told you to be cautious, and you would be, but there was no harm in being alone with Hugo. With his eyes closed and his face so relaxed, he was just the doll you’d held in your arms a thousand times before, all those times your friends had left you alone with him. “I  _ do _ love you.”

“Ich habe dich liebe.”

You tapped him gently on the forehead and stroked his hair when you had his attention. “You’re slipping into German.”

“You understood me,” he said. He moved his head along with the movements of your hand, and you laughed. “What?”

“You’re like a cat. No, not a cat. A tiger. Entirely too big and strong and deadly, shouldn’t be out among others, but you still love someone’s hands in your hair.”

“And anyone but you would get their hand bitten off.”

“Is this the sort of thing that made you believe I was yours?”

“You were mine, you are mine, you will always be mine.”

Now you had to stop, to pull back your hand and look on him and tell him that it would be so much harder if life had to show him that it wasn’t true, that it was better to accept your word.

It was just that it was so difficult. It was just that the anticipation of disappointing and hurting this lovely, dangerous tiger made your stomach tighten. It always had, and in that way, this was your own fault. He hadn’t needed you before you’d first done this, before you’d first stuck your hand in the cage and hoped the creature within wouldn’t rip it off. 

That was exactly as it had been, you realised. That was exactly what had happened. This beast you’d claimed and tamed with time, with kindness, with love, and you’d locked him back inside a cruel cage and walked away, as if he didn’t need more.

“I’m sorry I did this to you,” you said softly to his almost dream-like face. His eyes opened and he blinked with confusion. 

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” His accent was still slurring his English.

“I shouldn’t have gotten too close to you. In France.”

Now his dark blue eyes grew soft, and he held your hand to his chest. “You saw me.”

“I did.”

“You saw me exactly as I am, and you loved me anyway.”

“I did.”

Hugo leaned up on one of his elbows, sitting eye level with you, looking a tad suspicious of you and scared all at once. “You were the only one that ever believed I was good.”

“I do,” you whispered, hand in his hair again. “You are.”

“If you think that I am good,” he looked down for just a second and licked his lips. “Then why not? Why not get close to me? Why do you not want me? What did I do wrong?”

Your face fell and you shook your head. “Don’t think that way. I shouldn’t have gotten too close to you because we had a job to do. It wasn’t a European vacation, it was a mission.”

“What did I do wrong?” he repeated.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. There’s nothing like that, Hugo, listen to me.”

“There  _ has _ to be.”

“You didn’t have to be perfect for me to love you and you didn’t have to do anything wrong to break a relationship that did not exist.”

“Then what do I have to do?” He pressed his forehead against your shoulder. “What have I got to do? Just tell me, I will. If you want me to, I will. I’m imperfect and you love me perfectly. You are perfect, and I love you imperfectly.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” you swore. Trying to pry him away so that you could look him in the face did not work– _ how and when did he get so strong _ ? You tsked and started to unbutton his jacket from the bottom. “You’re going to get this all wrinkled.”

“It was never mine,” he snapped. “Leave it alone.”

“Hey,” you smacked his cheek lightly. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

“I am sorry.”

Your eyebrows arched. You’d expected a rebuke. “Are you okay?”

Now he did sit back to look at you once more. “Don’t go. I can’t keep you here, but don’t go.”

“Some things are more important than Congressional Medal of Honour dinners.” You laughed at your own little non-joke, but Hugo brought both your hands to his lips and kissed them like it was all he ever needed to do. Maybe he thought it, too. “I’m going to make a phone call. I’ll let them know that I wasn’t feeling well, and you took me to rest.”

“Then I’ll go and get food. I don’t want you to be hungry.” With a purpose, he was happier. He knew what you wanted. When he was gone, you couldn’t help but smile and shake your head at the door. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find this and a lot more at my tumblr, warmommy.tumblr.com!


End file.
